1. Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to a device and method for use in the transportation and storage of materials. More particularly, to the transportation and storage of materials that have a tendency to separate during transportation such as a slurries, complex emulsions, and/or mixtures of materials that may include solid particles in a continuous phase.
2. Related Art
Many devices for transporting and storing materials need a device for agitating the materials such as large bladed mechanical agitators in order to suspend or re-suspend solids in the material. These devices are expensive, very heavy, and reduce the volume or capacity of a tank. More specifically, these current solutions use large bladed tank-mounted agitators in the tank to keep the solids in the material suspended. Unfortunately these devices add considerable weight to the tank reducing the net payload, increase the cost, and so on.
Other attempts to transport the above-noted materials have used larger volume tanks with steeply sloping conic-shaped tanks that slope to the outlet in the middle to help the solids to slide out into the outlet of the tank in a stream. Such a stream includes both phases which may become thoroughly mixed and re-suspended as the material passes through a pump. However, certain difficulties are encountered in this practice, as even using a larger than normal bore hose may not always allow flow to begin from the tank to the pump as the solids tend to pile deepest in the bottom of the tank over the outlet.
Finally, users of materials, such as cement kilns, generally have physical and regulatory limits on the flow rate for unloading fuel. These limits are too low to allow high flow rates required to re-suspend the material, such as a fuel slurry, if it is simply off loaded in a single pass through the pump.
Accordingly there is a need for a method and device to re-suspend the material that is being carried or held in the tank and/or keep the material in suspension to complete the unloading of the tank without allowing significant solids to remain in the tank while not significantly adding additional weight to the tank.